


Eberron: Vurgenslye Under Siege

by CountDorku



Series: After the War [1]
Category: Eberron, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Dungeons & Dragons, Alternate Universe - Magic, Eberron (Setting), Gen, Khorvaire (Eberron), Mild Blood, Mild Language, Non-Graphic Violence, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:39:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27266590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountDorku/pseuds/CountDorku
Summary: After leaving the Order of the Emerald Claw, Adora has fallen in with an adventuring party.  While they're passing through the village of Vurgenslye in Karrnath, it's attacked by a group of undead Karrnathi soldiers, left over from the Last War!  Can they save the town from the corpse soldiers?  And why, two years after the War, is a Karrnathi town being attacked by Karrnath's own undead forces?
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Double Trouble (She-Ra), Catra & Entrapta & Scorpia (She-Ra)
Series: After the War [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990891
Comments: 11
Kudos: 7





	1. Martial

Adora’s sword made a crunching sound as she drove it into the mummified, skull-like face of the corpse soldier, and it slid off the blade and hit the ground with a rattle of bone, the corpse-light dying in its eyes. Beside her, Glimmer shaped glowing red-gold energy in her hands, unleashing a concentrated bolt of fiery planar power that burned through a second boneblade.

“These are Karrnathi undead!” Adora called, as she blocked a strike from yet another one.

“So?” Glimmer shot back. “We’re _in_ Karrnath!”

“I mean that they shouldn’t be attacking a civilian settlement! They’re supposed to be loyal to the nation!”

“Guys!” Bow, who was forming the third corner of the triangle, loosed another shot. “We don’t have time to hang around out here! We need to fall back to somewhere more defensible!”

* * *

“Somewhere more defensible,” in this context, was the largest building in Vurgenslye: the inn, which a battered sign informed Adora was called the Goat and Gargoyle. Glimmer hammered on the door.

After a few moments and a scraping sound, the door opened a crack, and a familiar voice asked, “Do you, like, have the password?”

“Don’t screw with me, Mermista,” snarled Glimmer. “The boneblades are on our heels, if you don’t let us in I’m using the last of my magic to take this door off its hinges.”

After a few moments, the door swung a bit further open, and Glimmer loosed off one last blast of power at the approaching horde before squeezing through the crack. Bow followed, and finally Adora.

A withered, claw-like hand was thrust into the door before it could fully close, but Adora’s blade lashed out, and the extremity hit the ground as Glimmer, Bow and Mermista forced the door shut. The sound began to recede as the horde withdrew, seemingly unwilling to push further.

As Bow and Mermista renewed the pile of furniture that was keeping the door shut, Adora surveyed the room. Most of the people there were civilians: mostly human, probably farmers from their garb and the array of battered tools that had been repurposed as tools of self-defence: pitchforks, sickles, and scythes, mostly. Some were carrying proper weapons, mostly swords and halberds; presumably, the people holding them were veterans of the Last War. By the bar was a middle-aged man, his body covered in a fine coat of bristly hair – a shifter, if Adora was any judge; he was holding the kind of improvised cudgel that you could find in any tavern from here to Xen’drik in case any of the customers got rowdy.

Adora raised her voice and called, “Who’s in charge around here?”

A dwarven woman stepped forward; her leather apron, the hammer strapped to her back, and her sinewy build made it easy to guess how she earned her keep. “That’d be me, young miss,” she said, her Karrnathi accent a lot more obvious than Adora’s own. “Torgga Tordrek, at your service.”

“I can tell you’re a smith; are you the mayor here, or-”

“Just a smith, young miss. The mayor…” She trailed off.

Well, that was nicely unambiguous. “All right. Any idea where these things came from?”

“Probably the Nightwood. It’s not that far away, and Korth’s on the other side. Wouldn’t put it past those bastards to have put caches of boneblades in it ‘for emergency use only’ and ‘forgotten’ to put them away after the treaty.”

“It may have just been an honest mistake,” said Bow. “It must have been hard keeping track of all the places they’d stashed a squad or three of corpse soldiers.”

The dwarf eyed Adora suspiciously, as if she’d just put two and two together and gotten a result she didn’t like. “You folks are adventurers, right?”

“Yeah,” said Glimmer. “We’ve been travelling with Perfuma and Mermista here for a few months now; we’re just passing through, making for Karrlakton.”

“Just seems there’s an awful lot of you folks around,” grumbled Torgga, and jerked her thumb at a couple of figures at the bar. One was tall and powerfully built, wearing a hooded cloak, while the other was small, wiry, and masked; Perfuma, the fifth and final member of Adora’s group, was sitting nearby, bandaging up a wounded villager, seemingly unaware that there was blood on her dress. “Ain’t much in Vurgenslye to attract attention, and suddenly two lots of you folks turn up at once.”

* * *

Adora and her allies gathered around one of the few remaining tables that hadn’t been repurposed for building barricades. Bow had unrolled a piece of spare parchment and scribbled some runes on it; as Adora watched, they started to glow, and the parchment became an illusory, three-dimensional map of the village.

“We can’t stay here forever,” began Adora. “This inn isn’t a fortress and there’s only so much food. We need to do something about these undead.”

Mermista tossed a knife into the air and caught it. “Can we just kill them?” asked the dark-skinned woman, making no attempt to disguise her Lhazaar accent. “They’re made of, like, bones. Get a hammer and swing.”

“There are lots of them, Mermista, and they’re tough. Just trying to beat them down is going to get us swarmed.”

Perfuma looked at her quizzically. “They are simple skeletons, are they not? It should be simple to outwit them.”

“It’d be nice, but no.” Adora shrugged. “Corpse soldiers aren’t, you know, geniuses, they’re never going to be invited to teach at Arcanix or the Rekkenmark Academy, but they’re at least as smart as I am, even if they’re weird about it. They’re probably rigging up a battering ram or something as we speak.”

“It’s because of the Odakyr Rites!” said the smaller of the adventurers, who had clearly been listening in. She had a scratchy, nasal voice, with maybe a hint of a Brelish accent. “I really wish I had some notes on how they really work, they’d be so interesting for my research-”

“Entrapta,” said the larger one warningly. “Sorry, I guess we should introduce ourselves.” She threw back her hood, revealing a face with the tell-tale greenish tint and large teeth that spoke of orcish inheritance. “I’m Scorpia Yeveld, and this is Entrapta d’Cannith.”

“And _this_ ,” added Entrapta, “is Emily.”

A scuttling sound came from behind the bar, and a construct emerged – a gleaming sphere of steel, purple glinting from a single amethyst eye set into its “face”. It stood on four jointed mechanical legs, giving it the appearance of a large metal insect.

Bow bent down to take a look and gave it an appraising nod. “This is good work. No Cannith badge?”

“She wasn’t originally a House construct. I found her abandoned in a Sharn gutter.” From the sound of Entrapta’s voice, Adora wouldn’t want to be whoever left the construct there; it sounded like the artificer would happily beat them to death. “So, I put her back together, and now we’re friends!” The construct leaped into the air and made a grinding noise; the gesture was disconcertingly canine coming from something so unlike a dog.

Bow straightened up and said, “Are you here on House business?”

“Nah, I’m kind of a solo operator at the moment. I’m researching forms of artificial and arcane sapience – the Odakyr Rites, for example, and elementals – to see if any of them could be adapted to future warforged development.”

Glimmer gave a meaningful cough. “I thought the Treaty of Thronehold outlawed making new warforged?”

“I figure that’s only temporary. We know that warforged are people now, right? You can’t make people and then sentence them to slowly go extinct. That’d be like putting a rule in the Treaty that says – that says gnomes can’t have children, or something.”

Adora thought for a moment. “I’m not sure the Odakyr Rites would be useful to your work, Entrapta. Even when they’re not, you know, laying siege to towns, corpse soldiers are kinda horrible. During the War, a lot of regiments would only fight beside them when they had no other choice.”

“I mean, I won’t know how useful they are until I get a look at them! Who knows, there might be something I can extract that doesn’t lead to the undead murder machine issue!”

“Right. Well, good luck with that.” Adora shook her head and said, “Wait, we’re getting off topic. We need a plan for dealing with these undead.”

“Could they have some kind of commander?” asked Bow. “Someone who might have ordered them on the attack?”

Adora shrugged. “Maybe, but it was pretty rare for Karrnath to put undead under the control of other undead until late in the War, and they probably wouldn’t have just stuffed a dread marshal in the woods and waited.”

“Doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” threw in Mermista. “One could’ve, like, come along later and hijacked them.”

Adora snapped a finger. “That’s a good point. We need more information.”

A few of the villagers turned around at Glimmer’s groan. “It’d be _great_ if I knew how to do scrying spells.”

Scorpia coughed awkwardly and said, “I mean, we can fight. We could arrange a scouting mission?”

“Okay, that works. Everyone on board?” Everyone nodded, so Adora turned to the villagers. “Who here can fight?”

A tanned human woman rose. She was wearing ordinary work clothes, but she’d strapped on some protective gear and had a two-handed sword strapped to her back; her dark hair was streaked with grey, and the scars on her face told Adora that she’d seen some action. “Name’s Elaydra,” she said, in a clipped Karrn accent – the sort of thing you’d normally get from the east, near the Mroranon border. “I was in the Conquering Fist. Most of the village were in the infantry levies or handling logistics, but for the best-trained we’ve got, Tomana there was a dragoon with an arcane cavalry team, and Gryazra was in the Blackened Sky before she settled down as an apothecary.” She coughed. “A few others are upstairs; we could haul them down if we need bodies, but they got pretty messed up by the War, so I’d prefer not to.”

“Leave them there unless it’s literally the only option. This is going to be hard enough on them as it is.”

Elaydra’s expression lightened, just a little. Of course, Karrnath took great pride in its military fervour, even after the War saw it field armies of the dead; there was probably a lot of stigma around War trauma. “Thank you. They’re my friends; I don’t want them hurt worse, if I can avoid it.”

“I have my own scars, Elaydra; I wouldn’t want anyone opening them further either.” Adora raised her voice. “Tomana, Gryazra, it sounds like you two are our veterans. I’d like to run some plans past you two – and you, of course, Elaydra.”

Chairs scraped, and two women stood in front of Adora, giving salutes. Tomana was the shorter of the two; the patch of vitiligo on her dark skin put Adora in mind of a butterfly – but one with a damaged wing, as the pale outline was interrupted by a dead-white scar on her left cheek, showing that she’d been clipped by some necromantic magic during her service. Gryazra was nearly Adora’s height, and from the looks of it, wielding the Order of the Blackened Sky’s alchemical weapons had left their mark on her – her skin was an unhealthy pallor, her hair was white and brittle-looking, and after finishing her salute, she dissolved into an ugly-sounding coughing fit.

“We have two priorities here,” said Adora. “We need to hold this inn and keep the people safe, and we need to deal with these corpse soldiers and whatever’s driving them to attack. I’m going to check with the others first, but what I’m currently thinking is that the adventurers, or at least as many as we can spare from holding the inn, head out and try and locate some command structure. We’re used to moving with little support and moving quickly through hostile territory, and we have plenty of combat experience. Tomana, you have experience protecting fragile allies; do you think you could hold this inn with the village’s veterans, or would you like an adventurer or two as backup?”

Tomana considered this. “We have plenty of supplies and a decent number of fighters. Most of the villagers have at least had some basic drills in case of bandits or Mournbeasts, and they use those scythes and pitchforks pretty regularly. I wouldn’t mind keeping that friend of yours in pink here, though; she’s got healing hands, that one.”

Adora nodded. “I think Perfuma would prefer to help keep the inn safe anyway.”

“That’s good,” said Tomana. “Where’d you find her, incidentally – and were there more like her?”

Adora couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “She’s from Eldeen – one of the Wardens of the Wood. I’ve seen her summon briars with thorns as long as shortswords.” She thought for a moment. “Actually, I might ask her to do that if the boneblades come again – they’ll have a hard time doing too much to the inn if they can’t even get within ten feet of it without being shredded.”

“Sounds workable,” said Tomana, with a nod. “Gryazra, is there anything you can do with booze? We’ve got plenty in the basement.”

Gryazra considered this for a few moments, then said, “With the supplies in my house, I could make it sit up and beg. With just my pouches here…I can at least make it more flammable. Fire’s never gone out of style as a weapon.”

“Just be careful with it. Those things aren’t stupid; they may end up wielding it against you.” Adora turned to Elaydra. “Any thoughts?”

“It’s a workable plan,” said the soldier, nodding slightly. “Check with the others upstairs, see how many adventurers you can get for your scouting mission.”

“Upstairs?”

“Yeah, the big orc girl and the lady with the spider thing were part of a group of four. The other two headed upstairs.”

* * *

Upstairs did not make a good first impression.

“Hey, li’l lady,” slurred a man who had apparently decided that the most tactically useful thing he could do was drink. The reek of cheap ale hung over him like a cloud; it smelt like he would bleed something frothy and brown if someone cut him. “Yer one a’ them half-elves, right? Wanna make some quarter-elves?”

Adora, her eyes on fire, stepped forward to teach him a lesson about messing with her girlfriend, only to walk into Glimmer’s arm. “No, no, Adora,” she said sweetly. “Let me handle this.”

Glimmer stepped forward, smiling gently, and delivered a lightning-quick punch to the man’s gut; the smell of ozone told Adora that there had been some magic behind it, too. “I’m not _half_ anything, asshole,” she told the hunched-over drunk. “The term is ‘Khoravar.’ _Don’t forget it._ ”

The man managed a groan as he sank to the floor.

“All right, everyone,” Glimmer called. “I’m told there are some other adventurers up here. Anyone know where they are?”

Nobody spoke up, but there was a general consensus that the other adventurers were in the room at the end.

“I mean, you are exactly half elf,” Bow muttered.

“Don’t push it, Bow. I’ve still got some power for the day.”

“You wouldn’t hit a fellow Aundairian, would you?”

“I feel very Aereni right now. Who knows, I may finally be taking after my mom.”

“You’ve never even been to Aerenal.”

“It’s not a place, it’s a state of mind.”

Adora couldn’t help but smile. There was something soothing about Glimmer’s and Bow’s banter, like nothing could go too terribly wrong while it was going on.

Glimmer knocked on the door.

“What is it, darling?” came a voice from within.

“We’re working on a strategy to deal with the boneblades. Wanna come out and join in?”

“Oh, fine, I suppose we can spare you a few moments. Come on, kitten.”

The door swung open to reveal two figures. One of them, the one who had apparently answered the door, had the chalk-white skin and hair of a changeling – that was unusual, since changelings usually preferred to wear some kind of mask in these situations. The other was wearing a hood, much like the half-orc woman downstairs.

It didn’t matter, though. Adora would recognise that build, that stance and those claws hanging on her belt anywhere.

As the hooded figure began to draw back, Adora hurled herself into a flying tackle – not easy from a standing start, but she managed it.

“Hey, Catra,” she said, her voice cold. “I think I’ve solved a little mystery.”


	2. Arcane

“And what mystery might that be, Adora?” spat the shifter. Her hood had fallen back, revealing her asymmetrical blue and gold eyes; her bared fangs gleamed in the light.

“I think I’ve figured out why this town is suddenly ass deep in corpse soldiers. You did this, didn’t you?”

Those eyes flashed with rage, but before Catra could respond, Bow said, “Adora! What in the pits of Dolurrh are you doing?!”

“You guys remember how I was raised?”

“Yeah, you were in the Order of-” Bow clamped his mouth shut; outing your friend as part of a terrorist group like the Order of the Emerald Claw was kind of a Bad Move.

“Well, I had…kind of a foster sister in there. She chose not to come with me when I left.” Adora smiled mirthlessly. “I’d like you to meet Catra. And how is Shadow Weaver?”

“All the better for you asking, I’m sure,” said Catra in a voice like poisoned honey.

Some sounds have a lot more stopping power than their volume would imply. The sound of a hand crossbow being cocked, for example.

“I hate to interrupt this little family reunion, darlings,” said the changeling, pointing their weapon at Glimmer, “but I may be forced to do something rash if you don’t get your hands off my paycheque.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it, Double Trouble,” said Catra coolly. “Adora was just getting up, weren’t you, Adora?”

Adora scowled, but Glimmer was at risk. She didn’t have a choice.

“Thank you,” said Catra, dusting herself off. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have my own business to attend to. I imagine that you can find your way out by yourself.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Adora, her tone grim. “This is your fault. I want to know how and why.”

“Really, Adora, if it _was_ somehow my doing, why would I tell you?”

“Because you can’t get out of here while all those corpse soldiers are around. They’re not going to be fooled by a rock thrown in the other direction, and you don’t have much of a team. Face it, Catra – if you’re not going to work with us, you could be in trouble.”

Catra’s ears twitched irritably. Finally, she said, “Shadow Weaver said the ritual would let me command them.”

“Shadow Weaver says a lot of things.” Adora kept her tone level. “So, what happened?”

* * *

The Ring of Siberys hung in the sky, a beautiful scar of glittering light. Three of the moons were full: the orange-red disc of Aryth, the Gateway, the white, slitted shape of Lharvion, and the barely visible, smoky grey form of Sypheros.

“You know,” said Scorpia, between gasps, “Lharvion reminds me of your eyes-”

Catra ignored this and took a swing at the wispy shape in front of her. The bladed claws strapped to her wrists passed through the shadow creature without leaving a mark, and a growl simmered in her throat. This part of the Nightwood was apparently a manifest zone that hadn’t been mapped; maybe it was only active when Aryth was full, or something. Or Sypheros. Or both! This magic stuff was supposed to be Entrapta’s job, that was why she’d rounded up the artificer in the first place. The point was, the briefing hadn’t mentioned shadow monsters.

Reaching into her pack, a difficult task in the heat of battle, she withdrew a vial and pulled the cork with her teeth. Some of the oil splashed to the ground as she hurriedly applied it to her weapons, but there was no time to worry about them.

The shadow leered at her, purple smoke hissing from its mouth.

“Gonna be a rough night for you,” Catra told it, and cut it down. As she’d hoped, the concoction Entrapta had brewed for them applied a thin veneer of magic to the blades – not enough to permanently empower them, but enough to cut through the creatures of shadow that haunted this part of the forest.

“Everyone, use the magic weapon oil!” she commanded. “These things barely notice ordinary steel!”

A shadow lunged at her from the side. As she spun to face it, bringing up her claws, there was a noise like someone uncorking a bottle, and it bounced off a shimmering purple barrier that had appeared.

“Good job, Emily!” came Entrapta’s voice from behind her as Catra took out the fallen shadow with a single vicious strike. “That was a great use of your barrier!”

Apparently sensing that the tide had turned, the wispy shapes began their withdrawal. Some merged with their wounded comrades, forming larger and more vicious shadows, but after Catra’s blade slashed through the first one, those, too, apparently decided to seek out easier prey elsewhere in the woods.

“Well, we’re here,” Catra announced as she surveyed the forest clearing they had ended up in. The barrow and commemorative obelisk looked like something built thousands of years ago, possibly during the Dhakaani Empire, but Catra knew that was camouflage. It had been dug mere decades ago, and the writing on the obelisk wasn’t Goblin or Orcish, but a now-obsolete Karrnathi military code.

“Uh,” Scorpia said, wringing her hands. “Are you sure this is, you know, safe?”

“Scorpia, if it was _safe_ , they wouldn’t need elite operatives like _us_ to do it.”

“I just mean that, you know, with the night, and the shadows, and everything…couldn’t we, I don’t know, do it in the daylight instead?”

Catra forced down her temper and said, keeping her voice level with obvious effort, “Scorpia. For all we know, this mission could be the key part in a plan that restores Karrnath to glory. It’ll be _fine_. You go patrol the perimeter, or something.”

Scorpia dashed off a parade-ground salute and headed off. Not for the first time, Catra wondered how someone as painfully straight-up-and-down as Scorpia ended up as part of a group like the Emerald Claw to begin with.

She unrolled the parchment Shadow Weaver had given her. This looked like the right spot to begin setting up for the ritual.

* * *

“And then, what, a bunch of angry skeletons burst out of the fake barrow and chased you back to town?” said Glimmer, an eyebrow raised.

Catra visibly bridled at this. “They didn’t _chase_ us, we…made a tactical withdrawal.”

“So a bunch of angry skeletons _did_ burst out of the fake barrow!”

Catra rolled her eyes at that. “Yes, yes, all right, a bunch of angry skeletons burst out of the fake barrow and chased us back to town. Does that help?”

“Not really.” Glimmer favoured the shifter with an impish grin. “But while tweaking your nose is a lot less fun than handing you over to the guards as a member of an outlawed terrorist organisation, it looks like I’m going to have to settle.”

“I wouldn’t spend more than a day in prison, Sparkles. The Order looks after her own.”

“The Order that the King declared enemies of the nation.”

Catra’s smug expression dissolved and was swiftly replaced with rage. “Kaius is the real traitor, a puppet king for the Houses-”

“Come off it, Catra,” Adora told her bluntly. “We both know you couldn’t give a toss about Karrnath. What are you _really_ after?”

“I don’t have to tell you _anything-_ ”

“Darlings, darlings,” said Double Trouble in a tone of cultivated boredom. “While I could watch this kind of verbal slapfight any time, ideally with a nice pie, surely we should be working on a plan for the boneblades, not on tearing strips off each other. I would _much_ prefer an audience that doesn’t smell of bones and dust.”

Bow coughed. “Do you think you could find your way back to the ritual site?”

Catra’s eyes narrowed. “Why?” she demanded. “It’ll be ass deep in skeletons.”

“Because if we can reverse the effects of your ritual, we might be able to get rid of the skeletons.” Bow gave a tight smile and added, “Which would make this a tragic accident and a reason to worry about other caches of corpse soldiers, but not an obvious sign of hostile action with a clear culprit.”

There was a pause while Catra turned this over from every angle. Finally, she nodded. “Which would mean that I had time to get out of here before the Blackened Sky or someone shows up.”

“And the rest of your party,” pointed out Glimmer.

“Yeah, yeah, and them too,” said Catra, a little too quickly, and Double Trouble’s face shifted into an amused smirk.

And then, suddenly, there was a sixth person in the group.

“Uh, like, I hate to interrupt,” said Mermista, “but y’know those skeleton guys? They’re kinda coming back…”


	3. Divine

Bow fired off one of his special arrows, and one of the advancing undead was consumed in a blast of fire. After a few seconds, though, it stepped out of the blaze, smouldering but otherwise mostly intact.

“Balinor’s balls,” muttered Mermista.

A volley of more traditional arrows from the archers upstairs rattled off armour and bone. One of the corpse soldiers fell, its skull knocked away by a lucky shot.

“Well, you were right about the battering ram,” said Entrapta, pointing. Approaching the inn was a tree trunk, shorn of all but the most convenient limbs for carrying it.

Adora groaned. “The one time I would have liked to be wrong.”

Entrapta tilted a head at her and asked, “Why would anyone like being wrong?” She seemed to think about this. “I guess being wrong lets you learn stuff, and that’s fun, but-”

“No, I just mean that I would’ve liked there to not be a battering ram.”

“Oh.” Entrapta pulled up her mask; underneath, she had light brown skin and huge reddish-purple eyes. “Well, we should be able to solve that! GRYAZRA, GET THE BARREL!”

* * *

Blue flames shot into the air as the barrel rolled into the team of skeletons carrying the tree trunk and exploded. One of the barrel’s hoops, glowing cherry red, shot into the air; it landed in another tree, which promptly caught fire.

“I mean, it could have gone better, but it worked,” said Gryazra. She turned to Entrapta. “Just as well you had those etching acids on you; mine were in my workroom.”

“I think it was the Fernian ashes that really made the difference, though,” said Entrapta.

“Oh, for sure, but the etching acids really amplify the effect.” Gryazra coughed into a handkerchief; Adora thought she saw flecks of blood on the fabric.

A scream came from upstairs, and Adora took the stairs three at a time, sword in hand. She lunged forward, driving the blade through an armour-plated ribcage; the corpse soldier folded forward, and Adora kicked it off the blade. From the looks of it, they were coming in through one of the back windows.

As another skull hit the ground, she saw it. While the battering ram had been drawing attention to the front of the inn, another group had been scaling a nearby house, and had lashed some ladders together to serve as a makeshift bridge to the inn. Scowling, she pushed the lead boneblade off; as it hit the ground below, missing the inn’s well by inches, she hacked downward with her blade at the side of the bridge. A few blows, and she was rewarded by the structure sagging violently, with the sound of wood cracking under strain.

One of the other undead on the bridge hurled itself at her, scimitar drawn, and she brought up her sword to parry the blow –

The makeshift bridge snapped, and the corpse soldier grabbed desperately at the windowsill with its free hand. Adora smashed the hilt of her sword down on its mummified fingers, and with a sound like breaking bones, the undead Karrnathi soldier fell.

Heading downstairs, she was met by Bow and Glimmer, who wore very similar expressions of grim determination.

“They’re falling back,” said Glimmer. “If we’re gonna get going, now is probably the best time.”

* * *

The corpse soldier toppled over; its skull had been driven into its torso by the impact of Scorpia’s blow. The half-orc had donned a pair of enormous metal gauntlets, which lent her strikes a tremendous amount of weight; thanks to some tweaking by Entrapta, they also crackled faintly, and lightning flashed between the plates of the armour. Another one was consumed in fire as Glimmer summoned her power, while a third was torn apart by Catra’s bladed claws, bones and metal scattering across the path.

The corpse soldiers were adept fighters, but they didn’t have the individual flourishes or quirks of a mortal swordswoman. None of them seemed to be learning, either; however many of them were deceived by Catra’s feints, they continued to fail to anticipate the manoeuvre.

The Nightwood was living up to its name. The afternoon sun was fading a lot faster than it would be outside, and the undead troops seemed to have quicker reflexes; Adora’s armour would probably require some attention, and Bow had been forced to hastily bandage a few injuries. Adora made a mental note to take this to House Tharashk when they reached Karrlakton; the House of Finding was usually good for a little extra money if you had a tip about unmapped manifest zones, and between this and Catra’s story, it was pretty obvious this area was tied to the plane of Mabar.

“Be careful, everyone,” said Adora, as the final one fell, pierced simultaneously by an arrow from Bow and a bolt from Double Trouble. “There are bound to be more of them.”

Glimmer batted her eyelashes at Adora. “I don’t need to be _that_ careful, do I? I mean, I have my very own knight in shining armour to protect me-”

Catra made a noise like she was struggling with a world-record hairball, and Scorpia immediately moved to her side. “Wildcat? Are you okay?”

 _Wildcat, huh,_ thought Adora.

Catra made an even more unpleasant noise and said, “I’m fine. Let’s get this over and done with; I don’t wanna spend any more time with the lovebirds here than I have to-”

A shape loomed out of the darkness.

It was clad in ornate, skeletal armour, its ragged black cloak held at its throat by a clasp set with a teardrop-shaped ruby. Its shield had once been adorned with a black skull, but it had been crudely crossed out, the paint removed with what looked like the edge of a weapon; the claw of a green dragon had been daubed over the top of the old heraldry. It wore a helmet that covered the left side of its face; the right side was nothing but a bleached skull. From the structure of the skull, in life, it had been at least partly elvish.

A dread marshal, in Emerald Claw livery. That was a problem.

It lifted its bulky maul in one hand, as if testing the weight, and pointed at them, barking an order in a language Adora didn’t speak; she knew enough to recognise it as Abyssal. Its voice was raspy and faltering, like every word was someone’s last.

More corpse soldiers burst from the woods, and the battle was on.

Adora sidestepped a slash and counterattacked, driving her opponent back. She could see Glimmer shaping a spell, and Catra and Mermista had ganged up on a target, striking at it from both sides at once.

“Focus on the dread marshal!” Adora scythed her sword downwards, and the corpse soldier’s skull shattered; it hit the ground with a clang of metal and a rattle of bone. “It makes them stronger-”

The dread marshal moved like lightning.

Bow was hurled aside by the walking corpse’s maul; it had missed him with the head, but the impact of the handle still had enough power to knock him to the ground. As Glimmer leaped in to defend him, it plucked her from midair with one hand, seizing her by the neck.

Adora’s and Bow’s voices mingled in the word, “Glimmer!”

As the undead warrior lifted Glimmer by the throat, Adora threw herself forward, desperately striking at the monster’s outstretched arm-

Light blazed, and when Adora’s vision cleared, her sword was wreathed in flames the colour of newly cleaned steel. The dread marshal staggered backwards, the stump of its arm hanging limply by its side, and Glimmer leaped to her feet.

Catra’s eyes were lit by a very different kind of fire. “Silver?!” she spat. “I knew you’d betrayed us, betrayed _me_ – but to go over to _Thrane_? Thrane, of all the Five Nations?!”

“I don’t know what this is!” snapped Adora. “I’ve never done this before!”

“You seriously expect me to believe that?!”

“I don’t give a damn if you believe it or not! It’s the truth!”

The dread marshal kept its distance, eyeing Adora’s now-flaming sword like a mouse wondering if the cat is awake. It hefted its great maul, and pointed it at her-

A beam of light lanced from Glimmer’s hand and blasted the first corpse soldier to move from its feet. The second was sent flying by a punch from Scorpia, and the third struck down by a shot from Bow.

As her friends and her allies forced the boneblades back, Adora charged the dread marshal, the fire on her sword wreathing her in light as bright as day. The maul came down, but she took her sword’s hilt in both hands and blocked; the fire surged, and the maul’s head hit the ground with a thump.

The burning sword plunged through the dread marshal’s breastplate, the ornately wrought steel ribs parting before her thrust, and the corpse-light died in its eyes.

Battered, depleted, and disorganised, the remaining boneblades weren’t much of a fight. Sometime, during the fray, Catra and her party had managed to disappear into the woods…but that was a problem for another day.

* * *

A gentle golden light wreathed Glimmer’s hands, while Perfuma’s shimmered with a faint green, wavering like the reflected sunlight from water. Torgga, now the de facto mayor, had decreed that tomorrow would be a day of mourning, for the villagers lost to the rogue corpse soldiers; tonight was to be a time for recovery, and so she was paying for a round of drinks at the Goat and Gargoyle. The entire main room smelled of dark Karrnathi ale; Glimmer had somehow managed to negotiate for a glass of Aundairian wine, and Bow, in an adorably misguided attempt to look tough, had ordered milk in a dirty glass.

“You really ought to be more careful, Bow,” Glimmer told her friend as he tested his arm. “That dread marshal knocked you about pretty badly.”

“Says the girl with bruises on her throat.”

“I was never in any danger. Adora was right there.” She smiled at her girlfriend; to Adora, it felt like standing in a sunbeam.

“Pity we couldn’t, like, get anything out of this,” grumbled Mermista. “I mean, we helped people, that’s awesome, but all we’re getting out of it is a free meal, a few spare coppers and a night at the inn. We’d better hope the job in Karrlakton is worth it.”

“So…after we finish up in Karrlakton, I want to go somewhere.” Adora took a deep breath. “I want to go to Thrane.”

“Planning on having a religious experience?” said Mermista drily.

“I want to know why my sword caught fire. The Silver Flame is in Thrane, so that’s where I need to go.”

There was a momentary pause, and then Glimmer nodded. “We’ll have to get you some proper travel papers, but we should have the money when we finish up in Karrlakton. I’ll try and get in touch with my mom; she has some contacts in Thrane.”

“We sure about this?” asked Mermista, and Glimmer pulled herself up to her full height.

“Adora’s been nothing but accommodating, Mermista. She’s followed us to every job, be it looting ruins or hunting monsters. She’s never had any personal stake in any of it beyond our friendship and a cut of the loot. I think she deserves a chance to follow up on this.”

“I agree,” threw in Perfuma. “How many times has she saved our lives, so far?”

After a few moments, Mermista nodded and said, “Okay, fine, but if I need us to go to the Principalities for something, you guys better not complain.”

“Complain?!” Bow’s eyes bugged out. “I’ve always wanted to go to the Lhazaar Principalities! So many pirates, adventures on the high seas, it sounds amazing!”

“It smells like dead fish and like half the people you meet will try to pick your pocket,” said Mermista. “It’s not that special.”

“Thanks, Glimmer,” Adora whispered, as the debate began to rage.

“Any time.” Glimmer popped an arm over Adora’s shoulder and gave her a faint squeeze. “What kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn’t back you up when something’s important to you?”

* * *

“Ah. Catra.” Shadow Weaver’s voice was as treacly and poisonous as bloodvine sap. “I trust you have some justification for your failure?”

“Your ritual wasn’t up to scratch,” Catra told her superior bluntly. She’d been weighing up her options on the road to Korth, and had opted to go on the offensive. “There was a dread marshal in the cache, and it had gone rogue. The whole thing was useless unless you wanted a few dead villagers.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, child. Nothing is useless if you learn from it.” The glow from Shadow Weaver’s eyes was a sickly, corpse-like green; it reminded Catra uncomfortably of the corpse soldiers. “The ritual _did_ reawaken them; it’s just that there was a greater force to control them.” Somehow, Catra could tell she was smiling. “I have another mission for you. You’ll find forged travel papers in a locker at the lightning rail station; use them to get to Thaliost. Your objective is to eliminate…” A silent shape appeared above her hand: a half-elven man with dark hair, green eyes, and the kind of stubble that takes careful maintenance. “This man. His name is Alarn Trennick; he works for Archbishop Dariznu.”

“He’s as good as dead,” said Catra, memorising the illusion.

“Actually, Catra, his death would be _advantageous_ , but not _necessary._ ” Catra could tell her mentor was smiling under that mask. “What is _critical_ , however, is that the attempt appears to be Aundairian in origin. Tensions in Thaliost run high, as they always do; if it appears that insurgency is growing, Dariznu will be forced to come down harder, and the Aundairian loyalists among the people will respond in kind to the Thranic crackdown.”

Catra nodded slowly. It was an ambitious plan, but a brilliant one. Aundair would deny responsibility, but it wouldn’t care overmuch beyond that; the Aundairian crown still resented the loss of Thaliost in the post-War talks, and it wouldn’t complain if the troubled city rejoined Aundair after a popular revolt. Meanwhile, His Excellency Solgar Dariznu, Archbishop of Thaliost, was a staunch ally of High Cardinal Krozen, and the Cardinal could ill-afford to lose such a useful asset at this stage of his political struggle with the Keeper of the Flame, so he would obviously have to respond to chaos in Thaliost. Without even necessarily taking a piece off the board, it would cause a lot of trouble for two of the major players.

She was halfway back to their room when Double Trouble stepped out of a shadow and said, “I assume, since you’re still breathing, that the meeting went well, kitten.”

“As well as can be expected.” Catra waited a few seconds while her heart rate dropped back to its normal place; paranoia may have been a useful thing, but it wasn’t exactly a security blanket. “None of us are going to be killed, and we have a new mission – an assassination in Thaliost.”

“Assassination is _such_ a waste of my talents, kitten,” said the changeling, buffing their nails on their jacket, “but your money is still good, so I’m sure I can get over it. Have you thought about how you’ll sell it to Scorpia and Entrapta? I fear it may trip whatever scruples they still have.”

“No, I haven’t thought about that, Double Trouble, and if you keep your yap shut, I won’t need to, either.”

“Ah, so they’re going on a sightseeing trip, then.” Double Trouble smiled, a slow, reptilian smile. “How perfectly splendid, kitten…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the handful of people who've read this admittedly extremely self-indulgent AU. There will probably be more of it sometime because I love Eberron a whole lot and can't be turned off by low view counts.
> 
> Also, in case anyone was curious about classes etc:  
> * Adora: Human paladin.  
> * Glimmer: Half-elf divine soul sorcerer.  
> * Bow: Human artificer.  
> * Perfuma: Human druid.  
> * Mermista: Human rogue.  
> * Catra: Swiftstride shifter rogue.  
> * Scorpia: Half-orc fighter.  
> * Entrapta: Human artificer, Mark of Making.  
> * Double Trouble: Changeling bard.


End file.
